Margins
by meliz875
Summary: "But sometimes you still write. Notes left on a pillow. Scribbles on the back of a napkin, or the letters you spell when deft fingers dance across bare flesh. A language that assures me I'm needed, that I'm loved." Bella rediscovers herself in an unexpected way. A series of vignettes that tie together to tell a single story. Written for TheTypeWronger.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: Margins**

**Author: meliz875**

**Pairing: Bella/Embry (mild)**

**Rating: T**

**AN INTRODUCTION NOTE FROM MELIZ...**

This story was written for the Tricky Raven Author/Artist Silent Auction, a fun event we did on the site that allowed our members to "bid" on an author of their choice in order to help us raise money to keep it going. In return, the authors agreed to write a oneshot based on a prompt given to them by their winning bidder.

My prompt was from my awesome friend, TheTypeWronger. Instead of trying to explain it to you in my own words, here are the most important pieces of the prompt she gave me...

_I once bought a copy of my favorite book from a used bookstore. It was a brilliant and beautiful book with the most painfully accurate descriptions of love that I have ever read. Anyway, I got more than I bargained for. Almost every page of the book (I didn't look through it before buying it, which was unusual for me, really) was covered with highlighter marks and scribbled notes at the page edges about a girl named Ginny (there was no Ginny, Ginger, or Virginia in the book). It was like a cross between a love letter, heartbreak, and a wish list. It was, in a word, amazing. And I almost felt like I had this... soul-deep connection with this stranger._

_So, my prompt is all of that up there. Doesn't have to be my book. Just a book. Bella's the bookworm, so she's the one who ends up with the book that's been scribbled in. And it'd make me just so happy if the book scribbler was revealed, because my book scribbler never was, and they will never know what their scribbles meant to me or how we thought/felt so many of the same things._

Finally, the book that appears in this oneshot – and you will see passages from it throughout – is "I Wrote This For You" by pleasefindthis. If you haven't read it, READ IT.

This is a New Moon AU, told in a series of vignettes (which I set as separate chapters so this story will read like a drabble series) that flow together to create the entire story. Combining that with the prompt, here we go...

Hope you all enjoy... :)


	2. Chapter 2

_**So yes, we could kiss. I could kiss you and you could kiss me. There's no science, plane ticket or clock stopping us. But if we kiss, it will end the world. And I've ended the world before. No one survived.**_

_**Least of all me.**_

I had not survived.

Time passed with an agonizing slowness, and meaning struggled to rise to the surface of a life I wasn't sure I wanted anymore. I could barely remember who I was. The person I used to be. Before him.

He was gone.

My life had _been_ him. Breaths were measured by the times he took them away. My heart beat for a soul and a life I wanted so completely. Meaning failed to show its face.

But that was before you.

Before your words. The words that saved my life.

The words that saved me.


	3. Chapter 3

_**You remember and dwell on all the things you've lost and ignore all the things you haven't. Because your scars are like stars. Yet the night stays perfectly black.**_

No one could reach me.

Days ticked by, but all I could do was remember. Bronze hair, amber eyes, and a smile that kept me frozen in place. _Frozen_. Like him. But I wanted that. I wanted it all. His marble skin, a non-existent heart I craved, and a steely gaze that wrapped itself unforgivingly around my own heart like an iron vice.

_Why?_

He was intoxicating. A heady mix of drugs. A lifeline, cut off completely without explanation. Without a single word that soothed the wound. And here I was, coming down from the high, but never really finding solid ground. Ridding my body of the toxins, but never fully recovering.

Stuck in a limbo between living and simply being.

I could feel the stares. Eyes bleeding with pity and a worry I couldn't bring myself to acknowledge. Their eyes didn't matter; they only crawled beneath my skin and scratched. Orbs of blue, brown, gray and green pleading with me to breathe. To hang on to the humanity I lost when he left.

Humanity.

I had never wanted it anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

_**This isn't me missing you. This is me missing the me I used to be.**_

_**This isn't me.**_

Months went by.

The ache was no longer sharp, but remained constant. The longing never went away. It constricted a heart that so desperately wanted a reason to beat.

There were days I couldn't get out of bed. Instead, I turned my back to the door. Turned my back on my father's despondent voice, muffled by the wood separating us. Pressing my face into my pillow, I allowed the cotton to absorb the shame in what I was doing.

What _he_ had caused me to do.

What I was allowing myself to do.

I wasn't a person who turned my back on the people I loved. On the people who loved me.

But fact bled into fiction. The truth of what was before me and the lies he left behind created a blurry, abstract rendition of her. There was no method. A thousand puzzle pieces, yet none seemed to fit.

I couldn't find her. I couldn't find that person

I couldn't find me.


	5. Chapter 5

_**To the birds, to everyone who's ever cried, to anyone who's ever tried. To those who paint the world with the colors of their feelings, to those who hope. To you.**_

The rain stopped falling moments before I found it.

It was nestled between two others, near the end of the row closest to the library windows, glass streaked with forgotten drops of rain. A corner I'd never been in.

Stepping closer, my fingers closed over the book's delicate spine, pulling it from its confines and turning its cover to face my curious eyes.

Days passed.

Sunlight faded to night and back again, and the book never left my hands. At night, while the rest of the world slept, I huddled in the corner of my bedroom, shoulder leaning against the wall. The book propped against my knees, I sought solace in every page. The words were written for anyone who read them, but my fingers curled around the covers exceptionally tight. They were written for my pain. They honored the love I lost, validated the emptiness, acknowledged a still heart.

They resonated, somehow reminding me I wasn't the only person who had possessed a consuming ache in my chest. Who had ever longed to forget. They both soothed and exacerbated the wound.

But beneath it all, I felt less alone. I felt a distant thrumming beneath my ribs. A flicker of hope. A warmth I'd forgotten how to feel.

I took a breath.

Turning to the first page, I read the words again.


	6. Chapter 6

_**I guess I should say thank you, for cutting all my strings. But if it's all the same to you, I wish you'd left my wings.**_

I got out of bed.

I smiled at my father. I put on the shirt I was wearing the day he left. When it became too much, I pulled the book from my backpack and skimmed the familiar words. Absorbed them. Searched for the strength I needed.

I looked for more to help keep me going.

Because I was moving. I was breathing. I was _being_.

But I wasn't ready.

I hadn't found her yet. When I closed my eyes, _he_ was still obscuring her face. A steady face. A stronger face.

And because of that, I wasn't ready to let go.


	7. Chapter 7

_**This is the song I only sing when you're sleeping. These are the words I say when you can't hear me. This is the way I look when you can't see me. And you will never know.**_

"Your book is falling apart, Bells."

Looking up from the tattered pages in my lap, I adjusted myself on the milk crate. Jacob Black was right. It wasn't the first time I took it with me to the garage. I'd been there several times, tucked along the sidelines, thumbing through pages as Jacob and his friends pieced together something more useful.

"I know," I murmured, fingers carefully drifting over the page coming loose from its binding. "I'm going to have to pay the library for it."

Jacob dropped his gaze, taking one step back from the open hood of the car in which his hands had been buried. His oil-stained fingers dug into his pocket before emerging with a twenty-dollar bill.

He stepped forward, offering it to me.

"Pay off the library, and buy yourself a new one," he murmured, the corner of his lip lifting slightly.

"You don't have to do that," I whispered to my best friend, despite my fingers reaching out to take the bill from his.

"I know...but you were smiling while you were reading it," Jacob pointed out. "It was nice."

I swallowed. "What was?"

It was Jacob's turn to smile. "To see you smile."

I didn't think much of it when you smiled at me too.


	8. Chapter 8

_**You can try and hold me back. Build your damn walls, pack sandbags along the edges and yell at the clouds and the rain to stop. But I will not relent. I will reach you. Because I am the sea. And I will continue to reach you no matter what.**_

The first copy of the book was at the bottom of my backpack.

The glass door closing behind me, it was almost like she was expecting me. A tiny silver bell cheerily announced my arrival.

"I was only able to get a used copy for you, Bella," Angela said, her wide eyes finding me immediately when she took a step back from the cash register.

The small bookstore smelled like the pages I'd been lost in for weeks. I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply before opening them, locating Angela once again.

I'd been searching for another. I needed it to be whole, with less damage than the one before it. The inexplicable connection I felt with the words, the comfort I felt as the pads of my fingers traveled memorized pages, was necessary. It had become a new lifeline...a friend.

One that didn't look at me with pity. One that understood the ugly scars I wore on the inside of my body. Something that didn't mind me the way I was.

Incomplete. Broken.

Quite possibly irreparable.

But I would take what Angela found me.

As I leaned against the wooden counter, Angela's deep brown eyes disappeared behind a fringe of choppy bangs when she bent over, retrieving something from beneath the counter. She re-emerged with a smile, sliding a gently used copy of the book across the rough surface.

A comforting wave of heat coursed through my veins, receding as quickly as it came when I took the book in my hands.

"Thank you," I murmured sincerely.

Angela nodded, her stare fixed on me. Never leaving as she accepted the money I laid on the counter. Traces of pity disguised as flecks of gold.

But I didn't step back.

"I hope it helps you, Bella," she whispered when I finally turned away.


	9. Chapter 9

_**If you thought that was our second chance, you're wrong.**_

_**It was our last.**_

This was not my book.

It was something else. Familiar words mingled with something different.

_These_ words were different.

I couldn't move, a forgotten heart now pounding fiercely in my chest and against the quilt covering my bed. My fingers stretched over slightly worn pages, exploring passages tainted with the mark of a yellow highlighter. Tracing the handwritten words etched in the margin just beside them, adorning pages I could recite from memory.

I didn't know these words, but I knew this feeling. This hope.

From a time long before him.

From a place I had yet to find.

I felt every single letter penned by an unknown author, resting effortlessly next to the words of someone else. Words meant as a message, both attached to and arguing with the one the book intended. Written against what I'd come to rely on.

Written for a person. A friend, a lover – I didn't know, but a real person. One the writer was desperately trying to reach.

I didn't understand. Maybe these words weren't meant for me. Maybe they were meant for someone else.

But it also didn't matter.

I kept reading, my hands trembling as I searched the book for more...

_**I guess you're proud of yourself for not trying to change me, even though all I ever wanted to do was change.**_

_WHY would you want to change?_

More words...

_**He gave me that night back and this time, I told you the truth. We talked and held each other till the sun came up. And as I went to hell, the devil asked me if it was worth it. I said yes. Yes it was.**_

_Was it worth it? Was it worth everything you went through, when he gave you up?_

More warmth...

_**Of course it's complicated. If it wasn't, I probably wouldn't be interested in you.**_

_We're all broken. We all have scars. It's what makes us who we are..._

Blossoming through my body...

_**Everything you do you pay for. So if you're going to kiss me, you'd best be prepared to bleed.**_

_I sometimes wonder what it would feel like..._

Wrapping around my heart with a delirious pressure...

_**So if all we have is that glance in the window. It all we have is till this train stops. If all we have is till the sun come up, till your lift picks you up. And if all we have is till the day I die, I'm okay with what we have.**_

_Be okay with what you have…with your life. And with the people who still want to share it with you._

Taking my breath away...

_**I was wondering if you had a second. To talk about anything at all.**_

_Do you? Next time I see you, I'll tell you..._


	10. Chapter 10

_**No matter how you stack me. No matter how you arrange me. No matter how you look at me. I am still here and I am still the same person made of the same things. I regret nothing.**_

Blurry eyes focused on a stormy horizon, my toes stepping dangerously close to an edge from which there was no escape.

The sole of my shoe scraped against gravel, disrupting a small pile of stones, sending them cascading down the cliff face. My eyes faltered, lowering, fingers trembling as I peered over the edge. The pebbles bounced, disappearing before the crashing waves below swallowed them whole.

I took another step forward, concentrating. Wondering what it felt like when the unforgiving sea swept away the small rocks. Suffocating them beneath the frothy waters.

_Why was I there?_

The wind whipping curls against my cheek, I tightened my grip around the book in my hand. My odd salvation. Comfort found in common words, and hope offered in the form of a message I knew _somehow_ had been meant for me to see.

My chest ached, but not from what it usually did. It ached to see. It ached to know.

_Who?_

I took a step back.

My hands shook, palms sweaty against the slick book cover.

It was impossible, what I wanted.

Another step.

A stranger.

_My _stranger_._

_You._

Quivering nerves spread to my legs, stealing the breath from my lungs and pushing me to the ground. Fingers scraped the rough dirt beneath me, and the book rested in my lap. Eyes no longer trained on the gray sky, I looked down as the pages fell open across my thighs...

_**And their shape and their hair and their eyes and their smell and their voice. That suddenly, these things can exist and you're not quite sure how they existed without you knowing about them before.**_

_I see it all. I still see her in you. She's there. You just have to look._

I closed my eyes.

She _was_ there. Confused. Wondering what led my feet to that spot.

Asking me if it _was_ worth it.

And she was hurt, hauntingly scarred, but full of something else. A yearning to start over. A desire to let go. A wild hope.

In the darkness behind my eyelids, I couldn't see him anymore. He was no longer standing there, hiding me from myself.

Instead, he'd been replaced by another. The mottled, unrecognizable face of a stranger. The one who had written in the margins.

And I could see _me_.

Facing you rather than hiding. Reaching for your outstretched hand.

Releasing _him_. Letting go.

Saving myself while you saved me in return.


	11. Chapter 11

_**You are a drop of perfect in an imperfect world. And all I need, is a taste.**_

It's the clearest of memories.

A bright spot in a mind riddled with obvious scars and painful memories. Ones that started long before bronze hair and amber eyes. Long before the book. Long before highlighted sentences and notes scribbled at the edge of pages.

It was the day it all became real.

The day _he _became _you_.


	12. Chapter 12

_**And if you can't say yes, answer anyway. Because I'd rather live with the answer than die with the question.**_

A pair of worn skater shoes peeked out from beneath the Volkswagen Rabbit, heels scraping the dirt as they scrabbled for purchase on the soft floor of the garage.

The book was in my backpack. I was reading something new, but the other was there. Just in case, despite the fact I pulled it out less and less, day by day. Reciting the words and the notes in my head only when I needed them most.

Peering up from the pages, I watched the blue and white shoes. "How long did Jake say he was gonna be gone?"

"Geez, Bella," The mumble, the voice, was almost lost beneath a ton of metal. "Am I that bad of company?"

Smiling, I shook my head. They came easier...the smiles. It felt good, forgotten muscles welcoming the gesture. "No, it's not that…I was just wondering."

There was silence from beneath the car. "He should be back soon. Had to run to the parts store in Forks." The clanging of metal against metal punctuated the silence before a voice again worked its way from under the vehicle. "How's that English paper coming? The one you told me about?"

I sighed, closing the book on my lap. "Okay, I guess."

"That doesn't sound very convincing..."

I chuckled, a foreign but welcome sound. "That obvious?" With a huff, I bent over, planting both feet on the ground and sticking the book in my backpack. "I don't know, it's just...I'm sick of writing papers like this. I feel like I've done it before, you know? The whole concept of it..."

There was another moment of silence from beneath the car before the next words came. Before they reached inside me and unintentionally stole the breath from my lungs.

"Write something new then..."

My eyes snapped toward the pair of feet, lips parting as I struggled to draw air into my lungs. I couldn't help it when my eyes fluttered shut. I couldn't help it as the words came back.

As I remembered the page, the picture, the irrelevant fact that the ink had been blue instead of black...

_**You're just another story I can't tell anymore.**_

_Write something new..._

My heart stilled in my chest as it all came together. The puzzle pieces, which had lay scattered for so long, finally fell into place.

When I eventually opened my eyes, several long moments had passed and by then, you were already looking back at me.

You'd pulled yourself out from beneath the car and were sitting on the dirt floor, forearms leaning against your knees, watching me carefully. A shop rag was nervously twisted through your fingers.

"Bella..."

The lump in my throat tightened as I tried to speak, my eyes still fixated on yours.

"Oh, god..." I gasped, suddenly dropping from the milk crate, the tightness moving to my chest. Knees pushed into the dirt as I closed the distance, crawling gracelessly toward you. "Was...was it...?"

I couldn't say it. I couldn't because I didn't know if I could take it…if the answer was a word I couldn't bear to hear.

I could smell you, a rich, musky sweetness mixed with traces of motor oil by the time I stopped, arms curling around my body. I'd never noticed it before, but in that moment, the scent was _everywhere_. Filling me, setting my nerves on fire almost like this was the first time we'd met. In a different place. In a different time.

Maybe it was the first time, because suddenly, the anxious yet anticipant waves pushing through my body were the only thing I could feel.

Pushing forward the realization that maybe I'd never known you at all.

"Embry..."

Your name was a plea, falling gently from between my lips.

"Was it you? Did you...did you write them?"

Your onyx eyes fell, and a soft smile spread across your lips. Your hands still clung to the shop rag, threatening it into a knot as the words – words that had possibly come so surely from your hand – struggled to form in your head.

"I liked it too," you finally whispered.

"What?" My body leaned forward, and I could see your shoulders rise and fall with steady, even breaths. "What did you like?"

You looked at me then, and the intense, certain look in your eyes sent a violent shiver down my spine.

"When you smiled..."

My lips parted, oxygen once again failing me, hands clamped tighter to my thighs. I managed to breathe in, a million questions swirling through my head. Demanding even more answers, but only one question broke free.

"How?"

The smile was still there. "I ordered a copy of the book, and...I read it too. I could see it, Bella, how it helped." You paused, swallowing to prolong the moment you needed to once again find the right words. "And I wanted to help you too...to help _you_ see."

"But..." I breathed. "_How_?"

You chuckled, pulling your gaze away. "I took a chance, thinking you'd go to the bookstore in Forks for another. I told Angela to make sure you got it."

Hot moisture pooled in the corners of my eyes, an inexplicable reaction to your words. I wasn't sad.

I was speechless.

I was _thankful_.

I was a thousand and one things. Struck with disbelief. Amazed by the person sitting in front of me. Completely overwhelmed by something I never thought I'd get.

To meet the stranger who'd saved _me_.

Even though you were never a stranger at all.

I still couldn't breathe.

"Why?" I whispered. "Why did you it?"

You shifted, lifting your body as you moved to your knees.

_Facing me..._

The first inhale worked its way past the knot occupying my chest.

"Because I couldn't _not_ do something, Bella," you replied insistently. "I watched my mom look like that for years, and I…I couldn't watch you do it too. You needed to remember…the person you used to be. The one that moved back to Forks last year, the one that visited every summer, the one that brought us all gifts every time she came back. The one who always put others before herself...but it was especially that way with _him_."

Your eyes fell for a moment, and my heart stilled beneath my ribs as I watched the shop rag fall to the floor. "And I don't know...I guess I was hoping you'd put yourself first for once, but maybe in a way that helped you see everyone else...like you used to. That maybe you'd remember how much we all cared about you, and how much you still had to live for. To be happy about." You hesitated, eyes lifting and capturing mine once again.

I listened raptly, now holding my breath in my chest.

"And maybe you could find new things to be happy about."

"I..." Words did not seem to be enough. Not because I was ungrateful. Not because I disapproved.

Because I didn't feel worthy of your gesture, given because you'd never lost sight of me in the first place. You'd seen past the scars.

And beneath it all – just when I started believing it myself – you had convinced me I was still worth saving.

Inhale.

_Exhale. _

"Thank you," I finally replied, my voice so quiet you had to lean forward. I didn't understand a single bit of it. How you'd known. How you'd done it. How you'd been able to say exactly what was needed.

But I stopped questioning. Questions didn't matter. _Why_ didn't matter the moment you leaned farther, capturing my face between dirt-stained hands.

"I meant it all," you said determinedly. "And I wanted you to know...that I think you're beautiful. Even now. Even after everything. Even if you might not."

I closed my eyes, lifting my hand, lacing it around yours where it rested on my cheek.

"Thank you..."

In that moment, those two words were _all_ that mattered.

My eyes opened in response to the absence of heat on my cheek. The garage came into focus in time for me to see you reach behind your body, hand disappearing into the back pocket of your jeans.

"I saved a page," you ventured, fingers finally emerging.

My mouth fell open, and I couldn't fathom how I hadn't noticed. How I didn't see an entire page of words go missing from a book I knew _better_ than by heart.

"I saved it for you...for this."

You pushed piece of paper into my clammy hands and my gaze fell, sound fading around me, trembling fingers unfolding the page. You leaned down, and I still managed to feel the softness of your lips when you pressed them to my temple.

And as I let the warmth of your breath spread through my veins, I read those last words. Highlighted yellow, and accompanied by nothing but a blank margin. No ink to mar their weight, letting the words speak for themselves...

_**I just need to be able to tell people I was here. I felt, I lived and I loved as I could, while I could. And that the person that I loved, was you...**_


	13. Chapter 13

I keep the book in the nightstand drawer.

I don't take it out as often as I used to. I don't need those words scribbled in narrow margins to remind me who I am. I don't need promises and declarations scrawled in black ink across rough, yellow pages.

I don't need them because you speak them to me every night.

Reminders come when I feel the heat of your palm pressed against my back, with the faint brush of lips where my shoulder meets my neck. You show me with strong hands, a smile meant only for me, and the warm, steady feeling of knowing that even when you're not next to me, you'll never leave my side.

But sometimes you still write. Notes left on a pillow. Scribbles on the back of a napkin, or the letters you spell when deft fingers dance across bare flesh. A language that assures me I'm needed, that I'm loved.

That you never minded either.

That my scars are what make me beautiful.

I find all the proof I need in ebony eyes that grab hold of mine and refuse to let go.

And I feel it inside me. A heart that once refused to beat can't beat fast enough. A better version of the one it was before.

Before you.

Before memorized words fused a pen and paper, mapping a path, refusing to let me forget. Allowing me to find myself.

Allowing me to find my way home.

_**But really, all we want, and I speak for the entire human race here, is contact. Someone to let us know that we aren't alone. That the world isn't a dream and you and I really are happening at the same time, even if it's not in the same place. That this is real. You're really there. I'm really here. We're real. **_

_**This is real.**_

* * *

_Review if you like. :)_


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